The Temple Destroyed

¹² On August 17 of that year,^[a] which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard and an official of the Babylonian king, arrived in Jerusalem. ¹³ He burned down the Temple of the Lord, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem. He destroyed all the important buildings^[b] in the city. ¹⁴ Then he supervised the entire Babylonian^[c] army as they tore down the walls of Jerusalem on every side. ¹⁵ Then Nebuzaradan, the captain of the guard, took as exiles some of the poorest of the people, the rest of the people who remained in the city, the defectors who had declared their allegiance to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the craftsmen. ¹⁶ But Nebuzaradan allowed some of the poorest people to stay behind to care for the vineyards and fields.

¹⁷ The Babylonians broke up the bronze pillars in front of the Lord’s Temple, the bronze water carts, and the great bronze basin called the Sea, and they carried all the bronze away to Babylon. ¹⁸ They also took all the ash buckets, shovels, lamp snuffers, basins, dishes, and all the other bronze articles used for making sacrifices at the Temple. ¹⁹ The captain of the guard also took the small bowls, incense burners, basins, pots, lampstands, ladles, bowls used for liquid offerings, and all the other articles made of pure gold or silver.

²⁰ The weight of the bronze from the two pillars, the Sea with the twelve bronze oxen beneath it, and the water carts was too great to be measured. These things had been made for the Lord’s Temple in the days of King Solomon. ²¹ Each of the pillars was 27 feet tall and 18 feet in circumference.^[d] They were hollow, with walls 3 inches thick.^{[e] 22} The bronze capital on top of each pillar was 7 1⁄2 feet^[f] high and was decorated with a network of bronze pomegranates all the way around. ²³ There were 96 pomegranates on the sides, and a total of 100 pomegranates on the network around the top.